Christmas Special Stamps

Our first Christmas Special Stamps, were issued on 1 December 1966 and were the result of a children’s art competition announced by the Postmaster General, Tony Benn, in May of that year.

Since then, children’s designs have only been used on Christmas stamps three times – 1981, 2013 and 2017.

Some 180 million stamps were printed for the first issue of Christmas Special Stamps. Since then, more than 17 billion Christmas Special Stamps have been printed. During the same period, there have been 229 Christmas Special Stamp designs.

The Christmas Special Stamps alternate each year between secular and religious images. However, Madonna and Child stamps are also available on the secular years for those who prefer to send their festive greetings with a religious stamp.

Click here to view our 50 years of Christmas Special Stamps gallery.

The most common recurring themes are as follows:

Three main religious themes:

1. Jesus Christ

2. Angels

3. Cathedrals/churches

Three main secular themes:

1. Birds/animals

2. The Arts/entertainment

3. Festive foliage

2018 Christmas Special Stamps

This year’s six stamp designs celebrate one of the UK’s best-loved Christmas traditions – sending festive greetings in the post to friends and family far and wide.

Available in First Class, Second Class, Large Letter and overseas values, the images on the stamps were illustrated by Stroud-based artist, Andrew Davidson.

While creating the images, Andrew discovered that in just over 100 years, there have been six monarchs. As such, each of the postboxes on the stamps features a monarch’s cypher.

The postboxes vary in design – from the early hexagonal ‘Penfold’ design of the 19th century to contemporary postboxes and ‘lamp’ boxes (those affixed to posts) – all still in use today.

Andrew said: ‘Knowing my illustrations on the 2018 Christmas stamps will be winging their way around the world delivering season’s greetings to friends and family, gives me a real sense of festive joy.’

Since 1982, Andrew has worked on more than 12 stamp issues for Royal Mail.